Infections are a large and growing problem in healthcare environments today. Many healthcare environments such as hospitals are plagued by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The demands on healthcare workers include constant vigilance for contaminated surfaces and opportunities for transmission, as well as costly management of patients who are carriers. Healthcare workers themselves can become colonized by these strains of microorganisms, and face job loss as a result.
Germs can live on surfaces for a long time. Some gram-positive bacteria can survive for months on dry surfaces. Blood-borne pathogens, such as HBV and HIV, can live for days outside of the body. Some of the most common nosocomial pathogens may well survive or persist on surfaces for months and can thereby be a continuous source of transmission if no regular preventive surface disinfection is performed.
As workloads increase with cost-cutting measures in the healthcare space, the ability of workers to manage the cognitive load of attending to and tracking contact with all surfaces in order to maintain proper hygiene and prevent the spread of drug resistant bacteria is therefore challenged. Hand hygiene is a simple solution and studies show that proper hand hygiene is a huge factor in thwarting the spread of germs. Even though hand hygiene is well known as an important step in healthcare vigilance, and reminders are ubiquitous in hospital settings, hospital workers are not always aware of everything they touch. Also, the quality of hand washing is a factor. Plus, compliance is a problem because hand-washing is a self-regulated act.
Typically, all of the control mechanisms in facilities today depend on the vigilance of healthcare workers, and the existing solutions in practice today are therefore extremely vulnerable. If only one worker fails to execute proper hygiene the entire system is threatened. There is a need for a system and method to overcome the above-stated shortcomings of the known art.